Lev Kravchenko

Lev Kravchenko (March 20, 1922-September 5, 1986) was a Colonel of the Soviet Union's Red Army who was the right-hand man of General Nikita Dragovich during the Cold War and later commanded Russian troops in the Soviet-Afghan War.

Biography
Kravchenko was born on March 20, 1922, in the city of St. Petersburg in Ingria in the northern Soviet Union. An amoral man with intense bloodlust, he served under Nikita Dragovich in the 3rd Shock Army during World War II and was blooded during the intense 1942-1943 Battle of Stalingrad in central Russia. In the war he became known as Dragovich's adjutant and called his "lapdog" by fellow soldier Viktor Reznov, who developed a rivalry with Dragovich and Kravchenko due to their refusal to send reinforcements to him during the battle in the Red Square of Stalingrad.

After the war, Kravchenko served under Dragovich in Unit 45, a special project group created by Joseph Stalin to question the Nazis about their war effort and search for advanced weaponry that they may have hidden from them. The weapon Nova 6, a chemical agent, was revealed to have been shipped in a large transport ship to a Nazi holdout base in the Arctic Circle, so Kravchenko participated in the assault on the outpost along with Dragovich, Viktor Reznov, and other former 3rd Shock Army troops. They were able to retrieve the Nova 6 but their plot to kill Reznov and other internal enemies of their project failed when British commandos stormed the ship and a three-way battle began; Reznov and two others escaped the ship. Kravchenko and Dragovich returned to the USSR with the Nova 6, and they formulated a plan called "Project Nova" in which they could threaten the United States with the Nova 6 weapon.

In the years between 1945 to 1961, Kravchenko climbed the ranks of the Soviet armed forces and was sent to Cuba along with Dragovich to gain an alliance with Cuba's Prime Minister Fidel Castro to operate in his territory. The CIA organized an initiative in November 1963 to assassinate Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Doctor Friedrich Steiner, along with the "Ascension" group of former Nazi scientists who worked on Project Nova for the Soviets, and sent an SOG group to Baikonur Cosmodrome on 17 November to kill Kravchenko, Dragovich, and the Ascension Nazi scientists who were overseeing the launch of two Soyuz rockets working on the Soviet space project. The team shot down a Soyuz rocket to punch holes in the Soviet space program and tried to kill Kravchenko and Dragovich, and they nearly killed Dragovich by destroying his limousine, but they could not confirm the kill.

Five years later in 1968 during the Vietnam War, Kravchenko was sent to Vietnam to supervise the Soviet Spetsnaz special forces' activities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and tested Nova 6 against locals, American troops, and at times his own men. The SOG caught up to him at his compound in the jungle on the Laos-Vietnam border and nearly killed him, with SOG soldier Frank Woods jumping with Kravchenko out of a window, knocking the two unconscious. Kravchenko woke and escaped, and Woods was held in the Hanoi Hilton until 1972, when he escaped. The CIA were informed that Kravchenko did not die, and they kept their eye on him.

Kravchenko was without a superior after Dragovich was killed on 23 February 1968 in an assault on the Soviet numbers station under the Gulf of Mexico, and he began to sell Soviet weapons to Cuba, Angola, and the third world as the USSR declined. In 1986 he worked with crime lord Raul Menendez in Nicaragua and sold him guns to help revolutions in Africa and the rest of the world. He was stationed in Afghanistan at the time, charged with eliminating Mujahideen strongholds around the country, and soon, the CIA sent Frank Woods and Alex Mason to help the Mujahideen and Tian Zhao of the People's Liberation Army in eliminating Kravchenko.

On 5 September 1986, Kravchenko led an attack on Khost on the Afghan-Pakistan border with heavy tanks, helicopters, and infantry, and the Mujahideen struggled to fight off the Russians. Mason and Woods captured Kravchenko after destroying his tank and took him to the Mujahideen camp for interrogation. They found out about Kravchenko's black market activities and that he had people in the CIA, before Frank Woods shot him in the head.